One Heart Too Many
by stelianqueen
Summary: It was a lie, or a product of simple ignorance. There had never been a human-Time Lord meta crisis, so how where they supposed to know of the outcome? Because humans age. And that's the opposite of what he was doing.


Alright, so this is a bit of an... interesting idea. I came up with it randomly in school and, while I don't think this is what actually happened, kept haunting me until I wrote it. And, yes, the ending is terrible. Also, i'm participating in NaNoWriMo, so my brain's kind of fried from writing. :/

Anyway, this takes place after Journey's End (with a mention of The End of Time Part 2), so if you haven't gotten there/don't want to know what happens, this does contain spoilers.

Allons-y, then!

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><p>You'd never known what it had felt like. All of those years, you'd guessed, and you'd thought you'd known, but you hadn't. Traveling that long, that far, seeing the wonders of the universe and the terrible parts. And how it crushed you right after it ended. And now you saw how Rose had felt after nearly falling into the void but being saved. And still did, you know, looking at her. It's passed, some of it, and you know she was probably worse in the beginning because there was no closure, no goodbyes (until you burnt up a sun), just waiting and nothingness. But you know she'll never be the same, Rose. Because she still looks up at the stars every night, and you know she's thinking about them, about the galaxies up there and how she should be, belongs, up there, saving them, right next to him. The Doctor.<p>

You. But not you.

Because you weren't the same. Not like him. You had his memories, and his body, and you acted like him. But you weren't. Because you were stuck. Unable to leave. Forced to ignore the memories and try to give Rose the life she deserves but neither of you want.

Because you committed genocide. Against the Daleks and Davros who would have committed genocide against every single living thing that wasn't them; because you did the exact same thing he would do, had done, before. It was an excuse. You knew that the reason you were sent there was only partially because of the genocide, only partially because of Rose, and mostly because you knew he had the self-loathing buried beneath such a happy personality, and you were a reminder of that, all the time, and what happed to Donna, what had to happen to Donna.

It was selfish. It was completely and utterly selfish and buried with excuses to himself and everyone else. And you knew it.

And there were nights when you stood next to Rose and looked at the stars with her and you remembered all of the worlds out there; worlds you saved and worlds you ended. And you wanted to get to them badly. So badly. To return to them and _be _the Doctor, not the half-human clone who was worth nothing, which was stuck on this dimension.

Then there were the nightmares that came every so often. You'd gotten them before, he'd gotten them before, but never like this, not 900 (or however old you were; you-he'd- lost count long ago. Sometime during the Time War, your age completely slipped your mind and by the time it was over you has no idea, and time traveling makes that sort of thing nearly impossible, so you- he'd- gone with 900 to start.) years of memories coming on you with nothing you could do. Before, you'd find some way to make yourself feel better. Go to some planet, save a bunch of people, and just stay with the feeling of greatness that came afterwards, if nothing went wrong (and especially if everybody lived.)

You wondered where he was, too. When he was and where he was and who he was, if he'd regenerated, who was with him, and everything.

But you tried. You tried so hard to ignore it, to act human, completely human, to give Rose that life. And you knew where she'd rather be, and you knew where he'd rather be, though you never talked about it.

And it got easier, after a few years. It was never simple, never felt natural, but after a while felt less terrible and the nightmares came less and you stopped wondering all the time and you thought maybe, just maybe, this life wasn't going to be too bad. You'd rather still be up there, in the TARDIS (whose link wasn't there and it felt eerily silent without hearing her and foreign languages were so strange because there was no translating, not anymore, and alien languages were so much easier to figure out than Earth ones), saving worlds.

And then ten years passed, and you hadn't aged at all.

"It's just some Time Lord thing, yeah?" Rose had said, though you knew she wasn't convinced and she was starting to suspect the same thing you were. "You're still half Time Lord, so you're aging slower?"

And you'd shaken your head, because you knew nothing at all. But you were clinging to the hope that, yes, you were going to age and die and not be stuck here.

Another ten years passed, and there was nothing. And you knew, then that it was all a lie. Either a lie or simple ignorance. This had never happened before; how were you supposed to know that you only had one life? You only had one heart, but that didn't control the lives. You'd assumed. You clung desperately to that. And it didn't happen.

And Rose was growing older, wrinkles forming on her face, and her blond hair graying slowly. Jackie and Pete were long dead, but they spent their lives together, and by the end they were both happy. Tony, who was now older than you, had moved long ago, was living somewhere in America, now.

Like every human, she died, eventually, at the age of ninety-three. She died in her sleep, peacefully, they said, from lung cancer that had reached the late stage. You sat by her as she died, in those last moments. She couldn't hear you, didn't know you were there, but you stayed. You knew you had to stay.

The last thing she said to you was barely a whisper, trying to get air into her ruined lungs to gasp, "I met you once. Before the Autons. On New Year's Day, 2005. I thought you were a drunk. You said… you said I was going to have a really great year. And I did."

You'd never done that. Not chronologically. But you knew, though. You knew right away why you'd done it. You were- he was- regenerating. Might have already. And it was heartbreaking.

So you were alone. Just like always.

You wandered the Earth, afterwards, as if that would help at all, as if it would feel like traveling the galaxies, but it didn't. You knew you had to get away from there, though, that place you'd stayed for so long, because there was nothing there for you now. And you knew you could die. It wasn't that hard, really. And then stop the regeneration, if it was possible.

But you couldn't.

You couldn't bring yourself to. You'd tried, a few times, and always stopped short. Because you couldn't. You didn't want to.

This continued for years. Wandering. Walking. No purpose. Just going. Because you couldn't stop. And sometime you ran. But not like before. Not from anything. Because there was nothing to run from.

Until one day, maybe decades later. You were somewhere in Africa, you think, a place full of forests and strange plants, and maybe it would have been beautiful, had you not seen it so many times.

And you heard that whooshing. A sound you hadn't heard in so long. And you ran. In the direction of it. Vaguely. And you found it, after stumbling over plants and roots and rocks. That box. That little blue box that was the stuff of legends. You'd found it, again.

The doors opened, and a man stumbled out of it, looked up, and collapsed. You knelt beside him, and saw the blood, everywhere, bleeding out, way too much of it. And normally this wouldn't be a problem. Regeneration. But you knew, looking at him, that this was it. The thirteenth incarnation. The last. And the universe couldn't do without it.

"It's you," he whispered.

"You knew," you said, quietly. "You knew I wasn't going to die, didn't you?"

There was no response. As much as you wanted one, you knew there wasn't time, so you said, quietly, "Kill me." And he looked up, confusion lighting his face at first, and then knowing. "Kill me, and take my remaining regenerations. If I have any. Because the universe can't go on without you. None of us can."

And he hesitated. The Doctor hesitated. But he went through with it. And you didn't care. It didn't matter.

And before you knew it, you were in that place beyond, with light on your face and worlds around you, and it was what you'd needed. All this time. Because the worthless clone did have a purpose, didn't he? Maybe he'd known, or maybe he hadn't, but still- in the end, you did save people.

She did make you better, Rose. In the end, she had. Even if her death had felt like a lead weight crashing down on you, just like it had to you- him- after she was first stuck on that dimension, only worse this time because you'd watched her grow old while you stayed young; watched her die while you stayed alive.

Your death had come centuries late. And only a small fraction of that had been even the least bit enjoyable. But it had come. And you'd waited for it.

Always.


End file.
